Monday, December 27, 2004

holiday talk

greetings you lil' buggers,

arrived back in london from vienna this evening. i'm on my 3rd cuppa and am avoiding the unpacking of my suitcase like no one's business.

vienna was wonderful as were my hosts. i can't speak the german language for anything though. my mouth just doesn't want me to make those sounds. i can barely say 'danke'

christmas eve was spent with kari. we made stuffed peppers and had a relaxing evening listening to music and discussing why we were where we were and how much we appreciate and enjoy the paths we've taken. that's really how my entire holiday went. a lot of relaxing, great food, enjoying great company. later that night we went to evening mass at kari's church. it was beautiful. i didn't care that i didn't understand the language. i liked listening to it. even got to hear 'silent night' in german, which was a goal of mine for the trip. met kari's friends too. go-go. she knows someone with the nickname 'go-go'

i was transferred back to anne on christmas day (it was great, anne and kari were like my divorced parents. i went from one to the other. guess which was the wild mom and which was the sensible? good balance i tell ya) anne and i decorated the apartment and then we had a lovely (beyond lovely, jim's meal was fantastic) christmas dinner. afterwards we played a board game about art. they had all of these little pictures and you got points for naming the artist, title, year, and place it was kept. naomi and i won. i think this had something to do with the fact that a couple of days before i saw quite a bit of the art at a museum in vienna. the kunsthistorisches, see i told you the language was hard, a good chunk of the world's art is there. then we read christmas stories out loud (dave sedaris' 'dinah, the christmas whore' was a favorite) we finished the evening (really late evening/early morn) with A LOT of wine (the bottles in vienna are huge and we had a couple of bottles of champagne with gold flecks in it, my stomach felt sparkly) and discussion that was fuelled by the documentary of wal-mart. it was found on the only english speaking channel cnbc. we made lists of things to do before we die (you can see the progression of the list as we drank more wine, saying things like 'respect and understand other people's lists') and generally had a good time. i also discovered that others have a strong attraction for cnn journalist anderson cooper. anne's flatmate, dune, and i found a number of websites about the fella.

can i just say that i'm enjoying a bit of debbie gibson's 'only in my dreams' right now? that's damn good pop.

...only in my dreams, as real as it may see-e-em, it was only in my dreams, no, no-no-no...enter funky sax solo...whoa-whoa

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